


Reflective surfaces

by imsfire



Series: Rebelcaptain appreciation week 2019 [6]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, the mirror hurts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 16:39:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18450494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: A series of vignettes as Jyn and Cassian each slowly come to recognise a kindred spirit, and journey from mistrust to hope and trust in one another.





	Reflective surfaces

**Author's Note:**

> For Rebelcaptain Appreciation week 2019; day six, prompt Mirror.

The grill-shop on Lucha Street had a bathroom.  That was the main reason she went there each day, instead of the no-less shabby but marginally nearer hole-in-the-wall kaf counter on Dock Road.  Until she managed to dredge up some kind of paid work, or picked another person’s pockets, it was a lifeline.  She could only afford a beaker of hot kaf once a day; couldn’t buy their mouth-watering breakfast breads, or their juicy grilled buns filled with fried eggs or smoked nuna sausage (and pickles, and plum sauce, and ketchup…).  But she’d been a regular for long enough that they recognised her and let her use the refresher anyway.

Jyn’s stomach growled at the smell from the hot counter, but she ignored it; nodded to the long-lekku’d Twi’lek lady at the till, and slipped in back.  Kaf came later; first, the toilet and then a wash.  What a blessing it had come to be, to have the use of a proper flush toilet, and a basin in which to clean herself quickly.  There was even some soap in the wobbly dispenser this morning. 

She’d slept behind the ore-packing plant, on the bare ground under a parked floater-truck.  Cold and dusty, uncertain and unsafe.  Had woken at dawn from a twitching nightmare and hauled herself out of the shadows, to stretch her stiff joints and crush the residual tiredness out of her face, and march out to meet another day.

With no washcloth she had to splash a fair amount, and the water was goose-pimplingly cold.  But it felt good to get the grey surface dirt and the ripe smell of sweat off herself. 

Afterwards, she hunched close to the hand drier, using her palms to direct the hot air over her upper body.  It didn’t make a lot of difference, but the warmth was pleasant.  Even if the shirt she pulled on over it was still grubby it _felt_ better, knowing that her body inside it was moderately clean again.  Tiny margins of difference, to make herself feel incrementally more human and less like a bug crawling along the floor of the Galaxy, leaving a grey trail of dust behind her.

She had enough change for one small steam-pressed kaf without milk.  Not enough to add even a small bread bun to her order.  But the kaf would be hot, and she could load it with sugar to give herself energy.  After that she’d have to boost some credits from somewhere, or go hungry for the rest of the day. 

Above the air jet, she met her own eyes in the reflective panel on the wall.  Despite the drier’s heat, she looked cold.  Cold-eyed, hungry-lipped, unkempt and very tired.  If she wanted to get near enough to any mark with good shit in their pockets to have a chance of robbing them, she’d need to brighten that look.  This woman in the mirror looked like someone you’d steer a wide path around.  Tight and tense, a mouth more likely to bite than smile.

_Smile, Jyn, smile.  Just enough to blend in.  You know the routine.  Folks need to feel safe near you, the kind of safe that comes from barely noticing you’re there.  If they do notice, they need to feel as if they’d like you._

_If I met me, I’d notice me.  Pretty sure I wouldn’t like me either.  I’d be watching my purse, around me.  My purse and my back._

_I can barely see myself anymore, the person Jyn Erso thought she was, the brave one who had goals and dreams.  Partisan, fighter, hopeful, honourable.  Too long buried now._

Jyn bit her lips, compressing them to redden them in imitation of lip-stain; yet another status marker she couldn’t afford.  Gritted them into a smile. 

Forced the smile upwards by bitter degrees, until it almost reached her eyes.

Her cold hands were clean, and her armpits no longer rank; her shirt was thin but dark enough that there was no visible dirt.  The small kaf she was promising herself would be hot, and caffeinated. And then…  _Force yourself on.  On through another day._  

People used to say that as an encouragement.  It was starting to feel like a prison sentence.  Always another day.

**

The en-suite ‘fresher in Lieutenant Sward’s quarters had a full-length reflector.  It was important that officers should be able to check their hair was strictly groomed, boots polished, uniform immaculate.  Cassian Andor could barely see himself anymore, under the armoured shell of Sward, the layers of care and precision and cold professionalism.  His persona had been tailored to a perfect fit, like a suit, or a cage.

He scoured his upper lip, his jaw and throat, shaving so close his skin burned.  Joreth Sward loved shaving, loved to feel his face sheared clean of its tell-tale too-dark hair, loved to know he’d reaffirmed the purity of his dedication to the Empire once again.  He did it twice a day, and three times on parade days.  Joreth Sward was perfect.  He had to be.

Cassian hated it, but who was Cassian?  He couldn’t even exist, for another two months minimum.  He wore Sward’s clothes, followed Sward’s orders, saw only what he saw.  He spoke in his voice and ate his food. 

The thought of a morning’s kaf and protein ration crawled up into his throat, tracking bile in its wake.  He looked himself in the eye, in the mirror. 

_No.  You won’t throw up.  You’ll show nothing, no emotion, no feeling._

_You have no feelings.  No weaknesses._

Such cold eyes.  Such a bitter, hungry-looking mouth, swallowing the acid that burned him inside.  A glimpse of teeth that might bite.

He pressed his lips together to narrow them into a regulation line.  Cold eyes in a cold face, and cold lips that had no recollection of smiling.  Facing himself, and another day.

**

The soldier escorting Jyn didn’t exactly shove her, but he did steer her down pretty firmly into the seat at the wide conference table.  He stepped away smartly, without removing the binders.  Chained and brought out to be viewed like a wild beast.  Oh yes, these people wanted to make their point alright.

She eyed them, the cold faces watching.  Then looked away.  Feigned unconcern, because Fuck them, fuck their interest, and fuck the ships they flew in on. 

She let her eyes rest instead on the polished surface of the table.  She only needed to lean forward a little to catch a glimpse of her own face in it.  Shifty and flickery, in this half-lit gloom she looked all shadows.  Not a beast, then, but a ghost.  A smudged, weary blur of anger, with a suspicious mouth and a darkness about the eyes.

She shouldn’t blame them for mistrusting a woman who looked like that.  Just the same, she did.

**

Cassian leaned back against one of the glassy panels and waited to be called forward to speak his part.  He studied the prisoner.  Angry and broken, a bad combination.  Enough fire and need in her still to cause real damage, and little or no socialisation left to leash it.  Feral.

The General had stepped back, his opening blows struck, Hard Man persona established; Mothma was presenting the sensible, reasonable alternative now.  Appealing, rational, even uplifting, offering trust and hope.  The prisoner watched with the expression of someone expecting to be shot in the back at any moment.

Not quite his turn yet; and her face troubled him at levels he needed not to think about just now.  He looked away for a moment, trying to clear that look of desperation and hunger and rage from his mind.

Caught a glimpse of movement in the shadows, and froze, hand tensing on his blaster.  Reflected in the duraglass panel to his left a blurred shape glared with dark eyes, savage and disorienting.  _Who’s that?_

But the movement stopped when he stopped, shifted when he shifted.  The reflection, and the harsh watching eyes, were his own. 

He could hear Mothma introducing him.  Making him sound like something rational, too.  He crossed the room; stood over Jyn Erso and began his questioning.  Rebel Intelligence; an analyst, maybe, some kind of stylus-pusher.  Not a spy and assassin.

The look in Erso’s eyes was judging as hell-ice just the same.  And why should she trust someone who looked like him, moved like him, whose eyes were still dark with yesterday’s murder?

He understood it suddenly.  She _saw_ him. 

He shouldn’t resent her for it.  He shouldn’t blame her for looking up at him with mistrust.  Just the same, he did.

**

Jyn couldn’t remember the last time she had been near enough to another person, and safe enough with them, to look into their eyes and see herself reflected there.  Yet the last few days she had seen countless glimpses of that tiny reflection.  Her lonely bitter face, her angry eyes, gleaming in his.    And his eyes were full of so much more than just the ice she’d imagined at first.  Concerned, guardedly reassuring, finally pleading on Jedha, as he pulled her from her weeping daze.  Commanding and coldly angry on Eadu, yet bright with his own unshed emotions, as they fled the wreckage of the hope he’d taught her to have.  Then warm, in the hanger, and warmer still in the skies above Scarif, when they had both looked away at the intensity of the touch between them.  The light she saw herself reflected in burned her, and the possibilities in his eyes transfixed her. 

**

The last time Cassian had been close enough to another sentient to see himself reflected in their eyes, he had killed the man less than a minute later.  The time before that, likewise.  To be this near somebody was dangerous, for them, and terrible vulnerability for him, if he allowed it to happen and did not strike. 

He did not strike Jyn Erso.  Not even when he wanted to, when the injustice of her words struck him to the heart, and their bitter truth twisted inside him till he could have killed for rage alone.  He had bloodied his hands so many times, and now his sacrificed conscience was thrown at him like an insult.  He bled inside, and hated her, and hated himself; and he could hear in his own voice, the moment he began to lose control.  He tore that anger out and threw it aside, and became calm and cold as a glacier again, and no longer vulnerable. 

So he told himself.  While in her eyes his own reflection stared back at him.

The last time he had been this close to another person he had killed them.  She had no idea, who he really was, what he’d done, what he’d lost; what he had become and why.  How long ago his innocence was, or the time when he too had had no political opinions.

He told her, and saw the tiny furious image reflected back.  That was how he expected to see himself, cold, ugly, in another’s eyes.

And then he was facing her once more, and there was nothing left of that anger, only his own hope, that somehow had taken root in her.  Jyn looked up, no longer feral, no longer goading but smiling and strange, circling him; shone like a moon, reflecting his own light back.

**

The light came and went, came and went gently as they descended.  Came and went in the momentary quiet, in the exhausted tenderness of eyes that met and held one another’s gaze, and were kind.  Came and went in the reflections they saw, in the unshed tears, on the bruised and bloody faces.

Came and went as they touched, and moved together, as they held one another for a moment in the peace of a goal accomplished and a chance taken, a hope fulfilled.

The elevator capsule jolted and steadied itself at ground level, and was still. 

Holding one another they made their way out, to the war-swept sand, and the sunlight on the beach.

 

 

**

 

 

Everything hurt at once.  First breath, the air of renewal; she gasped, burning, burning, and she was alive somehow.  The burning was everywhere, like acid inside her body, or a fire.  She’d been thrown into the fire, burning, burning, screaming.  Her eyes flew open into a light that was overwhelmingly bright, burning – there was brilliant whiteness all around her and nightmare forms moving within it – something ripping out of her gullet sharp as a blade and burning – _burning_ -

An unfamiliar voice murmured “Easy now, easy, tube’s out now, just breathe slowly, that’s it,” and the light resolved into the white glare of a med-bay, and reflections in a shiny ceiling above her.  A large, pale shape reflected, of a bed, and a blurry figure lying on it.  Was that – could it be – herself?  Another blur, that had to be a medic bending over her.  The calm human voice, still murmuring.  Something damp touched Jyn’s lips, that was spongey and wet, and she sucked the moisture from it into her parched throat.  She drew another breath, it still felt torn but the pain was easing and when the tiny sponge was brought back, rewetted and cool to the touch, she sucked on it gratefully again and tried to speak.

“Whh – where? –“

“Shh.”

There was another blur to the right, in the periphery of her vision, and up above she could see reflections like shadows moving in the shiny surface, upside-down and blue-white as ghosts in a folktale.  Another bed, another medic, another prone form. 

“Where? –“

“You’re aboard the Mon Cala flagship _Home One_.  You’re safe.”

Not what she wanted to know.  The figure in the next bed wasn’t moving, the medic beside them wasn’t moving, and she couldn’t move either, the entire universe seemed to be pinned to this spot and these frozen seconds.   She drew breath again and croaked “Where’s Cassian?”

**

“Where’s Jyn?” he whispered.  Spinal immobilisers, sutures, needles.  Pain.  Burning and bright lights.

His whole world reduced to these seconds, this tiny, bright space.

No point in asking about the mission.  He’d be lucky if he ever had the clearance again to be kept informed as to how any mission had gone.  But surely there was someone who’d let him know if she’d survived.  It was possible she’d made it.  By rights he should have been smoke and stardust by now, yet here he was, still breathing.  In pain, and in some kind of traction restraint, but alive; so it was entirely possible, he hoped. 

The ceiling of the med-ward gleamed; milky blue-white glass, polished to a high reflective gloss.  Not Massassi Base, then but a Mon Cala ship.  _Home One_ , most likely, or a hospital ship.  Which must mean he’d been out for a gap of several days at the least.

“Where’s Jyn?”

Everything hurt.  If he’d been beaten all over and thrown in front of a sandblaster, he doubted he could feel worse.  But alive, just the same.

_Please, please Force, let the plans have been received.  Let it have worked, let someone have been listening._

_And let Jyn live.  Let her live to see we didn’t let her down, to know she didn’t hope again for nothing._

It was hard to make anything out clearly in the distorted shadows moving over him, in the reflective surface.  But he could see something or someone moving, over to the left, and there was a sound of a raw gasp suddenly, and a professional voice that said “Easy now, easy, just breathe slowly.”  He recognised the harsh, torn quality of the breathing, the painful sound of the first inhalation after a breathing tube is taken out.  Someone was choking, trying to form words.  Too faint and weak to catch.

“Shh,” said the medic.

Cassian drew in his own sore breath and said the name again. “Jyn.”

It took all his strength, because every muscle ached and his skin had the healing soreness of recent and heavily bacta’d burns, but the immobilisers were low down, at the middle back, where he’d struck the girder as he fell, and at hip level.  Above, though it hurt, he could move a little.

He turned his head to the left.  

He didn’t want to look at the reflective surface, and guess what the blurry, shiny shapes above him were.  He wanted to see – to _see_ –

Jyn Erso with half her hair singed off, head tilted his way.  Fading scars on her face and her bare upper arms.  Eyes open and awake.  

Seeing him, and slowly, frailly, beginning to smile.

Safe aboard a Mon Cala ship.  Their injuries treated, calm medics attending, helping.  Safe.

She was too far away for him to see his reflection in her eyes.  But he no longer needed that, to know.  Her faith reflected in him.  His hope mirrored in her.  They saw one another clear.

And it was another day.


End file.
